Matt Reviews Casablanca

To start off our epic Milwaukee Day on Saturday, Steph and I finally partook of the vegetarian lunch buffet at Casablanca on Brady St. I honestly cannot say how we have lived this long in Milwaukee without trying this out. It’s been suggested countless times, I’ve wanted to go, I have no excuse. But on Saturday, it happened, and it was wonderful.

Skipping over the initial salad bar portion of the buffet, I took a small portion of every other item available, filling two plates. (Check out The Sporkful podcast for a detailed discussion of proper buffet strategy.) In addition to the salad bar, there were extensive options for both hot and cold items, including everything you’d expect (falafel, hummus, baba ghannoj, tuboleh) and plenty of items I did not recognize. Each item had a card with a name and sometimes a brief description, which was sometimes helpful and sometimes not, but I didn’t even look at them. The beauty of a vegetarian buffet is precisely that I don’t need to read labels. And hence I made my way back to my outdoor sidewalk table with two plates of everything.

Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to give a very detailed description of individual dishes, because quite frankly, I ravenously devoured so many items in a short span of time that it was honestly kind of a blur. Here are some highlights that I do remember:

The rice was amazing. I forget what they said was in it, but it was awesome.

The hummus was velvety smooth, light and delicious.

There was something labeled potato salad that looked like cold leftover mashed potatoes, but tasted amazing.

Many of the cold salads were not to be discounted, including a cucumber salad, a tahini salad, and surprisingly a cabbage salad.

There was something hot involving eggplant that was also outstanding.

But honestly, none of these notes matter, because my advice to you is to do what we did: go hungry and try everything. While there were a couple items that we could have passed on (some hot pink root vegetable something or other that Steph got from the salad bar), that’s precisely the beauty of buffets. For dessert we showed some semblance of restraint and split a single small slice of semolina honey cake, which was moist, rich, and delicious.

Seriously, check out this lunch buffet. If you’re a vegetarian, when is the last time you actually had free rein over an entire buffet line? And if you’re not a vegetarian, you’ll find something to love too. The best part is, it’s only $6.95! Plus, I’m constantly getting coupons mailed to us for buy-one-get-one-half-off buffets, making this the most affordable lunch I’ve had in a long time. Seriously, just go.